Witness to the news Who'll not confuse. "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." - H. L. Mencken...“You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.” -- SecState John Kerry
“Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.”― Frank Zappa "Would a government that used lies about WMDs to kill innocent people use a real one to scare patriots to act?" --Rich Scallia "The further you get away from official Washington, the closer you get to reality."

April 26, 2016

The FBI's TOR-tured Defense Is Bad Intelligence

--- Richie Scallia

Big thinkers like General Hayden predict the next 9-11 terrorist attack will be a cyber-attack on US. Imagine if the CIA and FBI knew how the terrorists could attack our cyber-vulnerabilities, just like they knew AQ was in town and planning something big, and did nothing to stop it. Can't imagine it? Well, zero-hour is approaching and the FBI is doing nothing to prevent a “zero-day” software vulnerability that allows adversaries to bypass or reduce security restrictions.

Zero-day software hacks systems which use that software. The FBI used it to hack into the Tor network. The Tor Browser runs on the same fundamental codebase as Firefox … which is used by hundreds of millions of people who are less safe because that zero-day has not been reported and patched.

The FBI’s activity subsequent to their Tor hack has been ruled an illegal search by a federal judge. The FBI doesn't care - it refuses to say how it did it - ENSURING millions of Firefox users are unsafe.

Why would the FBI do this? KNOWLEDGE IS POWER and FAILURE IS REWARDED WITH BIGGER BUDGETS.

The FBi kept the CiA in the dark about what it knew about the terrorists planning 9-11 and the CiA kept the FBi in the dark. How did that turn out, boys ????

Anybody with power, and zero-days are power, is naturally disinclined to give it up for some sort of abstract marginal benefit spread across millions of other people, even if that benefit is cumulatively massive. It’s hard to see how a star-chamber FISA-like review board can effectively advocate for stripping government agencies of that power — even if that would make the public more safe. Expect more of the same; and expect criminals to use exploits that the US government could have closed long ago.

Our "intelligence" people are infamous for using TOR-tured defense to not share intelligence. But there is method to their madness: they can wait for another big terrorist attack and go to Congress and demand more resources. Hey, it worked for 9-11. Yeah, some buildings fell down, a real nightmare for US, but the FBI and CIA got a bigger budget, and that's a wet dream for bureaucrats.